Rings of Power Season 2 Episode 8 is a dramatic, emotional finale that somehow finds the silver lining of its undeniable tragedy: Celebrimbor dies, Sauron wins, but the Elves are united.
Last week’s penultimate episode of Rings of Power was a bloodbath. While Celebrimbor kept a palmful of his marbles and forged the Nine, Sauron maintained his illusion as fire and blood rained down on Eregion, with Adar’s Orcs slowly destroying the great city.
Battle ensued (after Elrond kissed Galadriel, yikes), with the Elves and Uruks colliding on the muddy marshlands outside the city’s walls. Meanwhile, Prince Durin rallied the Dwarves to join the fight with their axes, only to call them off to appease the king, who’s gone mad with greed in the depths of Khazad-dûm.
That’s before we get to the Stranger and Tom Bombadil – and rest assured, we get a great answer to his identity (and I was right!).
The Balrog waketh!
Durin finds his father deep in the mines, his “mind and soul” corrupted by the ring. As rams into the wall (and a deep grumble creeps up from beneath), he orders the king to take off his ring or he’ll cut off his hand.
“You’re strong enough to wield an axe, but are you strong enough to wield it against your father?” he asks, and Durin admits he can’t. He recalls arm wrestling with his dad, and he’d let him raise his hand just a little bit, just enough to let him feel some pride before he slammed it down.
“Be strong again Father… take it off,” he asks, but he refuses and bashes through the wall, with rocks falling into the deep. “Come and see the true wealth of our mountain,” the king asks.
As they look at the “dynasty of Durin”, with lifetimes worth of mithril just a stone’s throw away, an amber glow rises from below. A scorching bright whip grabs the king’s ankle and pulls him toward the edge, and it becomes clear what’s attacking them: the Balrog (the same one Gandalf fights in Fellowship of the Ring).
After Durin gets knocked back by the force of its sword, the king finally removes his ring. “I never let you lift your hand. It was you, just you getting stronger. Forgive me, my son… King Durin,” he tells him, before leaping toward the Balrog with his axe. They clash weapons, and the shockwave collapses the mine. (It’s probably the coolest moment in the entire show.)
The Stranger meets the Dark Wizard
As he wanders under Rhûn’s twilight sky, he meets the Dark Wizard. “Manwë [the leader of the Ainur, the wizards and godly spirits known as the “holy ones”] promised you would come. I confess my patience wavered, but my faith in you, old friend, did not,” he tells him.
He then appears to confirm a major thing about his character: they’re Istari, two of the five. “You were the one who convinced me to leave the uttermost west for this world because you knew none of us could ever hope to defeat Sauron alone,” he explains.
The Stranger says he was told that the Dark Wizard wished to ally himself with the Dark Lord, but he doesn’t pay any attention to that allegation. Instead, he promises to give him the answers he’s been seeking; “your past, your name, even your staff.”
It gets better (seemingly). The Dark Wizard found Nori and Poppy and made sure they were safe, but the masked Easterlings show up with a knife held to their throats. He kills one of them and the other two flee.
As the Stoors gather around, he explains how he earned his name out of “ignorance and fear” for his kind. Poppy and Nori criticize him for killing the bandit, but he says, “Pity won’t defeat Sauron.”
The Stranger wants to know if the Dark Wizard wants to defeat Sauron and become his successor. He does, and he wants the Stranger alongside him. “I’d sooner walk this desert forevermore, nameless and forgotten,” he says.
The Dark Wizard doesn’t like that one bit. He raises hundreds of boulders from the ground and hangs them over the Stoors’ village. “When your senses have returned, I will be waiting,” he says, before dropping the rocks on everyone – but the Stranger comes to the rescue, holding most of them before anyone is crushed.
Phârazon prosecutes the Faithful
Things take an even bleaker turn in Númenor. Phârazon gathers the leaders of the Faithful and claims Miriel is allied with Sauron, and that’s how she survived her trial by abyss with the sea worm. They’re all declared traitors, with Lord Belzagar sending the king’s troops to round up those who stand against him.
As they storm the city, leaves from Númenor’s tree fall across the evening sky. Ëarien begs Elendil for help, so he decides to go west – but Miriel refuses to leave with him.
Her place is in Númenor, she says, but she gives him one hell of a gift: Narsil, “the White Flame”, the sword that’ll be eventually reforged into Aragorn’s Andúril. “Reclaim your lordship and, with this sword, destiny,” she tells him.
RIP Celebrimbor
Things go from bad to worse in Eregion, with the Orcs wreaking havoc inside the city and picking off its remaining archers. Galadriel leads a small group to safety, only to be confronted by Orcs in the woods. She pleads for their safety, and in return, she’ll hand herself over to Adar.
Meanwhile, Sauron tortures Celebrimbor, shooting him with arrows over and over again until he tells him where he hid the Nine. Even in agonizing pain, trembling as blood soaks his body, he refuses. “The rings are beyond your reach, as I shall be… soon I shall go to the shores of the morning, born hence by a wind you can never follow,” he says.
Sauron has no intention of letting him die so soon. “There are ways of keeping you alive, friend,” he warns. Celebrimbor brands him a “shadow of Morgoth” who’ll be destroyed by the rings of power, with “one alone proving [his] utter ruin.”
Armed with a spear, he stabs Celebrimbor in the stomach and pins him against a pillar. “I am the creator. I am the master,” he says, and with his dying breaths, Celebrimbor tells him: “No, you are a prisoner. Sauron… Lord of the Rings.”
The Orcs arrive and ask if he’s Sauron. “I have many names,” he says, as a tear rolls down his face.
Kemen takes over Pelargir
Over in Pelargir, Theo asks Isildur how he lives with the death of his mother. “Poorly… I carried it poorly. I didn’t realize that until I came here. It seems there’s grander things here than I thought, and after it made me realize how small I’d become,” he says.
Isildur offers to take Theo to Númenor, but he says he prefers being a “low-man.” Estrid comes in, revealing that her husband has started building a home for them in Pelargir. “I always thought his kindness was what love felt like, but when he said it I felt ill,” she says. They kiss, and he asks her to join him on his journey.
Little does he know, Kemen – aka Middle-earth’s Joffrey – has just arrived, and he effectively tears up the colony’s earlier agreement with Miriel. He reunites with Isildur, but an affectionate embrace frosts over with Kemen’s petulance. He refuses to let Estrid on the boat to Númenor and explains how Elendil is wanted for treason.
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“If I’d had it my way, the old fool would be dead,” he venomously says, before threatening to slaughter Berek. Isildur calms himself down while Kemen announces that Pelargir is being turned into a fortress for Númenor’s soldiers and its people will be required to deliver timber if they wish to stay.
Later, we see Isildur aboard the ship to Númenor, leaving Estrid and Theo behind. As Elendil leaves Númenor, we also see Miriel handcuffed and standing before Phârazon.
Adar… the Elf
Galadriel agrees to Adar’s terms. She wants to team up to defeat Sauron, and she’ll allow Adar and the Orcs to retreat to Mordor and live there peacefully and uninterrupted.
Adar turns round, and he’s been healed by Galadriel’s ring. “When I last looked like this, I was known by another name… a meaningless name, a name I was given. Adar is the name I earned,” he says.
He doesn’t seek this power. He gives Galadriel the ring and pledges to “create a lasting peace in Middle-earth” if they work together. No more flames, no more war – once Sauron is gone, they can both live in harmony.
One of Adar’s closest Uruk confidants is brought in on a stretcher, after being injured by Sauron. As he leans down, he says, “It’s too late” and stabs Adar, before he’s killed in a scene mirroring the Dark Lord’s execution at the dawn of the Second Age.
Sauron vs Galadriel
Sauron appears behind Galadriel, ordering the Orcs to raze Sauron. She tries to attack him, but he locks her sword with Morgoth’s crown, at which point he sees her ring glistening in his eye. He wants it, as well as the Nine, and a fight ensues.
Galadriel cuts his face and kicks him over a wall, but Sauron is clearly the stronger of the two. However, she’s distracted when he assumes the form of Halbrand. She lashes out, and suddenly, he transforms into her, forcing her to fight herself. He briefly turns into Celebrimbor, before they both fall from a rock structure onto the ground.
“I see you, I know your mind. The door is still open,” he offers. “The door is shut,” she promises, before engaging in even angrier swordplay. He pins her against a wall with Morgoth’s crown. “I would have placed a crown upon your head. I would never have rested until all of Middle-earth had been brought to its knees to worship the light of its queen,” he says.
She says the Free Peoples of Middle-earth will always resist him, but as she’s slammed to the ground, he reclaims the Nine. “Give me your ring. Galadriel, your ring,” he telepathically tells her. She takes it off and hands it over, before gripping it tight. “You wish to heal Middle-earth. Heal yourself,” she says, before sacrificing herself and falling backward off the cliff, out of his reach.
Elrond uses the ring to save Galadriel
On the ground of Eregion, Gil-galad, and Elrond are forced to witness the Orcs burning every record of Celebrimbor’s work, reducing the history of his mastery to ash. The Dwarves arrive, so they start to fight back. Elrond thinks he sees Durin, but it’s Narvi, who tells him that “the prince is in mourning.”
They find Galadriel, whose immortal spirit is being drawn into the realm of shadow from her wounds with Morgoth’s crown. Gil-galad can’t save her on his own, so Elrond wears her ring.
The Stranger is… Gandalf!
Nori and Poppy try to help the Stoors repair their village, but “some things lost are lost forever. No matter how hard we fight, how much it hurts, or how much our hearts yearn to put them back together. This world is so much bigger than any of us. Sometimes the winds blown against us are just too strong. At those times, Mr Burrows said, ‘We’ve just got to accept it, what’s broke is broke and won’t fix.”
The Stoors thank the Stranger, whom they call the “grand elf”, before setting off on their first migration. “It’s high time I walked my path and you walked yours,” Nori tells him, and with tears in their eyes, they part ways.
He’s left alone in the battered village, but as he walks away, his foot catches a large stick. It’s his staff!
The Stranger goes back to Tom Bombadil’s home and abandons that nameless name forevermore. “It was all a test, wasn’t it? Another one of your riddles. I was meant to choose friendship over power. I was meant to help them. I was meant to find this,” he says.
“A wizard doesn’t find his staff, it finds him… like his name,” Bombadil says. He thinks on it for a moment, before revealing what we’ve known all along: “Gandalf… that’s what they’re going to call me, isn’t it?”
“Now… let the song begin,” Bombadil says, and the pair sing into the night. Elsewhere, the Dark Wizard stares into the sky; is he Saruman, a Blue Wizard, or someone else entirely? We still don’t know.
In Khazad-dûm, Narvi tells Durin that Eregion’s survivors fled to a valley in the north. “Tell [Elrond] Khazad-dûm stands ready to offer aid once more,” he says, but as Disa points out, they’ve got problems of their own.
“Your father’s passing has left us in a tangle. The lords of the Blue Mountains paid him vast tributes and they’re demanding to collect,” she explains, and according to Narvi, other Dwarves believe they have a claim to the throne – including his brother.
Welcome to Rivendell
Galadriel wakes up in a “sanctuary, protected by the Elven rings.” They never call it Rivendell, but that’s clearly where they are (albeit in its earliest shape). Elrond gives Galadriel her ring back, and she reunites with Arondir.
Gil-galad has a decision to make: they either take the fight to Sauron or fall back and ready their defenses, the “sword or the shield.” Galadriel says they should remind their people that light overcomes darkness, not strength.
“The sun yet shines,” she says. As they look down at the survivors, Gil-galad raises his sword in the air. War has begun.
After the finale, make sure you check out our recaps of the rest of Rings of Power Season 2:
You can also read our breakdown of the Undying Lands, Forodwaith, and Círdan, and if Rings of Power is considered canon in Lord of the Rings. If you’re looking for something else to watch, check out other TV shows streaming in October, and since it’s the spooky season, we rounded up every horror movie coming to streaming this month.